Limping leftward - Italian politics

SINCE the fall of the Center - Right government of Silvio Berlusconi in January 1995, Italy has gone through 15 months of suspension of democracy. During that time the country has been ruled by a "technical" government headed by Lamberto Dini and supported by the leftist parties that had lost the 1994 elections, plus the Northern League. The members of the Dini coalition had only one thing in common: they were afraid of new elections.

Finally, on April 21, Italians were again allowed to vote. The electorate basically had four choices. First, there was the Center - Right ("Polo per le liberta" -- Freedom Pole), comprising Forza Italia (the free-market movement founded by Berlusconi), Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance, the conservative Right), and a Catholic, moderate group (CCD - CDU). It was these parties, plus the Northern League, that had won the elections of March 1994. Facing the Center - Right, there was a large and mixed assortment of leftist parties, led by the post-Communist Party (PDS --Democratic Party of the Left), which had chosen the olive tree as its symbol. Besides these two major alternatives, voters were offered the Northern League, and the unreconstructed Communists (Rifondazione Comunista). The League, confined to the Northern part of the country, has as its principal goal the secession of those regions from Italy. The unrepentant Communists, present throughout the country, support sharp increases in taxation, a wealth tax, reductions in working hours so as to increase employment (!), and the rest of the policies of the ultra-Left.

As it happens, there also was another tiny party, which no one had taken any notice of: the unrepentant Fascists (MSI - Fiamma tricolore) consisting of those who did not approve of the democratization of the Right under the National Alliance's Gianfranco Fini. This minute group of diehards wound up playing a significant negative role in the elections.

Contrary to what the world press reported, the election results were favorable to the Center - Right: Freedom Pole increased its share of the vote by 6 per cent over 1994, and it received more votes than the Center - Left Olive Tree grouping. Even if one adds the unreconstructed Communists to the Center - Left coalition, the Center - Right came in first: 16.5 million votes v. the 16.2 million of the Olive Tree plus the unreconstructed Communists. Finally, if one considers that most of the 10 per cent of popular votes received by the Northern League is due to its strong anti-government appeal, the conclusion is clear: the Left in Italy represents a small minority of the total vote.

However, since the League ran on its own, it deprived the Center -Right of a substantial share of the anti-Left vote. Secondly, the unreconstructed Fascists, though winning only one seat in Parliament, succeeded in attracting enough votes in many constituencies to prevent the Center - Right candidate from beating the leftist one. According to most estimates, this meant a loss of 34 deputies and 17 senators for Freedom Pole. Thanks to these two factors, the Center - Left won enough seats to be able to form a majority by joining forces with the Communists. We thus have the paradox that a country where two-thirds of the voters are opposed to the Left finds itself governed by an alliance of the Left and the ultra-Left.

Another way of putting it is that the outcome of the elections was determined by the extremists. The ultra-Right (the Fascists), by taking votes from the Center - Right, helped the Left win several seats; the ultra-Left (the Communists) received enough votes to allow the Left to form a government; and the secessionists (the Northern League) won enough seats at the expense of the Center -Right to prevent it from having a majority.

What will this mean for the future of Italy? The "reformed Communists" of PDS have gone overboard to show that they have nothing to do with their past. Call them Communist and you're likely to be sued for libel -- definitely not politically correct. Also, instead of having the leader of their party -- which is by far the largest in the coalition -- run as their candidate for the Prime Minister's office, they selected Romano Prodi, a left-wing Catholic with a reassuringly sheepish face, in order to prove that theirs was a Center - Left coalition, not a leftist one. The party symbol still contains the hammer and sickle of the good old days, but it has been located at the bottom of their irenic olive tree. Despite all these efforts to appear new and reformed, the leaders of PDS occasionally reveal their true identity. For example, Luigi Berlinguer, president of the PDS deputies, commented on their victory at the polls by saying: "We've waited forty years for this to happen." Forty years ago the members of Mr. Berlinguer's party considered Stalin "the greatest benefactor of humanity." One must hope that Mr. Berlinguer didn't exactly mean that Italy is going to have a government run by Stalinists.

What kind of policies can we expect from our new president? I believe we know what to expect, as we have already experienced this formula for more than a decade. From 1980 to 1993 Italy was governed by what has come to be called "consociativismo," a system in which almost all decisions had to be approved both by the Center - Left government and by the Communist opposition. The partners of that formula are now all represented in the governing coalition, and there is no reason to suppose that their policies will be any different from what they were in the 1980s. They can easily be summarized as "spend and spend, tax and tax, elect and elect" --that is, using government spending as an instrument for acquiring popular support and re-election, plus attempting (vainly) to remedy the financial disarray of the public sector through continuous, uninterrupted increases in taxation. Let me illustrate.